ESO Launcher does not close elegantly PC/NA

NicGroover · June 2021

I am experiencing the same problem.

I opened a ticket about this problem that I have only encountered for a few weeks (no configuration changes). I have done all the things advised by the technical service without success. Finally, they told me that the problem was with me and referred me to Microsoft's technical service.

NicGroover · June 2021

Despite yesterday's maintenance, the Launcher problem has not been resolved. It is necessary to systematically go through a Ctrl-Alt-Sup to close it and it becomes annoying in the long run.

NicGroover · June 2021

The last answer from Bethesda

"Thank you for your patience. We consulted our technical team to see if there were any steps we might have missed. But unfortunately we have tried all the troubleshooting steps we recommend.

We will have to send you to Microsoft support to see if there is any further troubleshooting related to your computer that they can recommend.

We are very sorry, we wish we could do more for you.

Thank you for your support and interest."

Thanks for the help... Uh no, there was no result

Aca2017 · June 2021

I experience this problem as well. For me, it is intermittent, happens at most 50% of the time, and nothing about my system (that is under my control, anyway) is any different, between a Launcher that will exit gracefully when requested and a Launcher that is clearly entered some sort of zombie state. Beyond that, the ESO launcher is the ONLY APPLICATION among the many that I use that behaves this way.

All of this suggests that while the problem may be induced by some combination of conditions in the system environment (under the hood, not readily apparent to the user, nor under user control), it is unique to the ESO launcher, and I expect could almost certainly be fixed/worked around once understood.

I expect this will be one of the many issues in ESO that will never be resolved. In Bethesda's defense, if they can't reproduce it, it does become more difficult to fix. Having said that, obviously, they could (if they wished... versus, for instance, "blaming the victim" and washing their hands of all responsibility) collaborate with ANY OF US who are experiencing the problem, instrument a version of the launcher to dump useful information once it has entered zombie state (starting with a stack trace of all active threads), provide a means of inducing it to perform that dump, supply that variant of launcher to selected victims, have those selected victims collect and email the resulting dump somewhere... but it seems that is not a step they are prepared to take.

We will all have to learn how to launch the Windows task manager and kill the launcher manually (anticipating the utter lack of interest in fixing the issue, I have been doing this for years, to the point that it has become reflex; I mean, why bother to report something like this, we all know how useless that will be; Just kill the launcher via the task manager and move on with your life). It takes maybe 5 seconds to perform, end-to-end.

Now, the Craglorn/Cyrodiil screen tearing/load screen stuttering/disconnect problems... I can't play in either of those zones any more (have not for years, except to collect skyshards, as laborious as that becomes under those conditions), there is absolutely no recourse for the user, and there seems to be a similar level of apathy towards that issue as well. The only recourse is to stay out of those zones.

Frustrating, but a foundational fact of life for ESO users.

OnnuK · June 2021

I am also using steam linked client, and had this problem for months. Now giving Admin privilege to Bethesda.net_Launcher.exe works. I created a direct shortcut to the .exe and run the game from it.

EDIT/update: Giving admin priv actually makes worse. Now the launcher asks username password which means ignorring the steam connection. So nope it does not solve the case.

NicGroover · June 2021

TESO's amazing answer to my launcher problem that I'm not the only one to have...

All my other programs close properly except the Launcher.

Hello,

We're sorry but we don't have any additional solution.

We are sorry but we have no further solution,
Francis

Wolfenbelle · June 2021

This is not an identical issue to the one the OP posted, but it's similar and possibly related. I can't get the game to launch. PC NA, Win10, no other problems with my computer, just this. Since the last patch, I can't get the game to launch. The executables both have permission through the firewall, but Windows does not recognize eso64.exe.

This screen shot shows the message after I click Play.

This one shows the black blank screen that comes up after I click Play and answer yes to let eso64.exe run.

Roach2010 · June 2021

I just had a launcher update which installed a new version of the Visual C++ Redistributable files. Is this going to provide a fix for the Launcher crashing issues?

deviousthevile · June 2021

GreenHere wrote: »

Friendly reminder for everyone needing to open Task Manager all the time:

You can hit Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open Task Manager directly!

It always surprises me how few people know this keyboard shortcut. Enjoy!

Yup this is what I have had to do more than a few times, but at least it works!

blackpool9 · June 2021

Roach2010 wrote: »

I just had a launcher update which installed a new version of the Visual C++ Redistributable files. Is this going to provide a fix for the Launcher crashing issues?

If the C++ update was supposed to fix the launcher shutdown issue, it failed. To be fair, the first 24 hours after the C++ update and full computer reboot, the launcher shut down without issue. I was on the verge of posting a 'congratulations on fixing the shutdown issue' message when...duh duh duuuuuuuuuuhhhh. Both launchers (Steam and non-Steam) on both machines (laptop and desktop) are not shutting down. I have all of them running with admin privileges. Doesn't seem to make a difference.

Back to having task manager running 24/7.

Red_Feather · June 2021

ESO launcher is strange. After I turn off the game and launcher, I have to open the system tray and hover over the launcher icon to make it disappear!

CeyowenCt · September 2021

ZOS_BillE wrote: »

If the launcher remains stuck when quitting, there could be a permissions issue. Try setting the launcher to run as an administrator. They should also make sure the launcher is added as an exception in their anti-virus. Steps for doing so can be found here.

So I followed these instructions, and ran into an additional issue: when I would click "Play" in steam, it would do something in the background but never actually show the launcher. After a few seconds, "Play" would be green again.

To fix this, I had to set Steam to run as administrator too. Unfortunately this means that every single time I open Steam, UAC pops up and asks if I am sure.

So... it works. kinda. But could we PLEASE get an actual fix?

ZOS_Bill · September 2021

As this thread is now a few months old we have decided to close out the thread. If you are still running into issues with the ESO launcher you can start a new thread in the PC Technical Support forum.